Diet in the LOS, How Dozer did it

The beginning of this year there was no doubt about it, I was unfortunately overweight. A diet was one of those things I had been putting off, partially delayed by an emergency appendicitis operation and motorcycle accident last year. In any event, I did finally get started on the 26th of January of this year

It preparation, the first thing I pulled out was my handy ‘Recommended Thai Food Menu’. This was done by the manager over at the Dusit Sports club a while ago, I picked it up from him a few years back. I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing the information. One of the difficulties with dieting here is it is sometimes hard to differentiate between diet and non-diet foods. That’s where this small chart comes in handy. A lot of foods on there I don’t like, so mostly I just picked out a few and normally when eating out that’s what I have.

As far as my diet goes, I was only maybe 8 kilos overweight, but it seemed like a lot more. I started at 92.5 on January 26th and hit my goal weight of 85 on the 3rd of May. Now I weight about 80 kilograms and feel 100% better than before. It has helped with my blood pressure and just general well being.

I found it challenging to lose the weight though, I must say. I needed to stick on the diet 100% and exercise just about every day to lose an average of about .6 kilo per week. My particular brand of the diet, especially at the beginning, was; breakfast – cereal (granola with corn flakes) with skim milk, lunch – khow tom gai, dinner larp gai (refer to the chart for the Thai equivilant). After a while I’d mix in some other foods.

One of the things that started getting me overweight in the first place is this: Mrs. Dozer. She habitually is a snack buyer. If we stop for gas she’ll buy a bag of chips, some dried fish snack, deep fried peas and maybe popcorn. It will invariably be at about the mid point between lunch and dinner, so I’m hungry. Then she takes a couple of bites and puts the open bag of chips in the middle of the car between us. I not a chip eater, but sometimes (OK, every time) I just couldn’t resist, normally at the same time berating her for buying such crap.

In any event, that was the first thing I stopped on the 26th of January. I refused to put anything in my mouth just because it was there. I mean in Thailand there is a lot of good healthy food to be had, but also ton of junk food. If you look at what the average Thai eats I’m not sure how they stay so thin.

The other thing I did differently while on the diet, is I beefed up on my exercise routine, basically exercising every day except Sunday.

Readers, how to you find it here, more easy to maintain your weight at a good level, or more difficult than home?

Of course, I should thank Mrs. Dozer who got on the bandwagon and started cooking some nice low calorie dinners. But, I also like eating out, so it is nice to have an idea of what foods you can eat, since some things that seem like they should be reasonable calorie wise aren’t.